Extinction Chronicles - 240520 ·

Well yesterday’s writing was a crock of shit; i almost feel i should apologize - but then i think i should apologize for everything i can’t fix or make right (whatever the fuck right is). Today i listened to Bob Dylan discuss literature as it pertains to his Nobel Prize. He shared three primary influences: “Moby Dick” - Herman Melville, “All Quiet On the Western Front” - Eric Maria Remarque, and “The Odyssey” - attributed to Homer. It should tell me something about myself as a man of letters, that i know so little about “All Quiet On the Western Front,” confusing it with “Birth of a Nation,” no irony on ‘merican indoctrination with that disclosure. Today the theme seems to be shame, probably from an image in last night’s dream involving a gay Rasputin in my past informing my life today: C.G. Jung - “until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” I am no more conflicted than any adult male without a country, facing grave doubts about every aspect of his upbringing and seemingly besot on all sides by an inexplicable sense of shame. 

What is fascinating about Mr. Dylan’s conversation about why his work is considered literature was a laser-like focus on the points of stories and how they relate to his work - a universality if you will. I veer from hero worship having a brother seems as determined to destroy my self-image as i am to build the self-image of the brother below me - sanctimony was a blood sport where i grew up, so i mistrust either image - but Bob Dylan i trust · the brother of the boyhood chum who first introduced me to Bob Dylan’s music, later ruptured my right eardrum with a tossed firecracker somewhere around age 10 or 11. I have yet to find a way to weave that personal experience into as useful a narrative as Mr. Dylan has found for the stories he read around that same age. My father was a high school English teacher and had me reading Herman Hesse’s “Siddhartha” a few years later, so it is not as though i lack the literary influence but haven’t yet found a way to connect the homilies that made up so much of my conversations with my father to the daily confusion of my existence - save what you read before you.

Ego is a bitch and a useless handmaiden - and humility is nearly as worthless. It’s that paradox again - ma has been one of the most self-involved humans in my 65 year’s experience, and i mean that as the Aussies might, “in the nicest possible way.” Yet of the last of her many studies as a water colorist of not inconsiderable talent, was to try and reconcile what she found in the emerging images of the Hubble telescope via National Geographic by what her own hands and heart might translate. It is that sort of courage of her soul to peer into the unknown i cannot escape regardless how much animosity about her own life experience she unfairly attempted to attribute to my existence - this much i know, i am not alone with that conundrum. How could she look so attentively into the universe and fight so hard not to see the “i” who only wished to be loved¿? Back to the theme of the day “shame” - what is it, and how is it that those who would murder an adolescent elephant in the wild for a photo-op posses no shame?

I do not know how to animate my outrage about the extinction of our entire species into cogent prose that passes the “goombah” test - for anyone to read and recognize their relationship to the story. I operate at an instinctive level, but have been told by professionals about instincts; it has been said that my “instincts stink.” I accept this opinion of another as best i can and press on from a biological imperative - apparently my time is not yet nigh. So how am i to leverage a seemingly inexhaustible gift for pissing people off, coupled with a seemingly inexhaustible capacity for feeling the suffering of others to benefit a “dying species”? That is a fair question which has apparently been conveniently excised from the internet “Super Highway” by the recent absence of the voice of reason - Greta Thunberg · Am i the only person on the planet that feels the absence of this courageous young woman willing to assume the fate a species that would apparently shame her by ignoring her rather than accept her solidarity with all of us who want to live - from whence comes the fascist proclivities of Sweden would be my next question. 

Just like Yemen became the focal point for starving children, the Saudis became the “butt boys” for the Empresarios extraordinaire mssrs d_rump & cmpny, or vice-versa; i always get the two confused - who’s doing whom. We are not dogs, and i refuse to lay belly up for a gaggle of punks in pinstripe suits and large withdrawal balances, while brethren close and closer to them suffer death and mismanaged healthcare due to avarice and greed - so shoot me · i care. That i am to die alone and unloved is no longer important, but of every importance - because the harder i laugh at those around me arranging their entire lives based on how many likes they can acquire, the lower my “stock” sinks. My family won’t abide my renegade ways and i doubt from the peaks of the Himalayas to the ports of of Montevideo that my conceit will ever be forgiven - so i plunge forward and hope somehow, one word, one gesture - one disrespect will not be lost on a population that has clean forgot how to respect itself · neenerneenerneener .  ..  ··· 

jts 24/05/2020

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

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Extinction Chronicles - 230520 ·

Tomorrow is Bob Dylan’s Birthday - i was going to try and give him a surprise birthday party · but how do surprise someone who has “heard it all,” and i believe him when he says that. When i was studying literature instead of running after it like a runaway bus, the same talking heads that are telling us it’s joey biden or nothing were assuring we students of literature that there are no more than 6 stories in the history of the world and everything you read is a variation of one sort or another - i think it may be true, mostly because i may have married three of them. When i moved to the city i live in it was hot, and got hotter - so i researched “how do you cool public places” and found a ceramic tube construction that fits into an inverted arch that can reduce the temperature of multiple meters by considerable degrees C/orF. They scoffed at the time, as tourist i had no rank and as an expat i had no friend. 10 months later, degrees warmer than this time last year, not quite a tourist but definitely not an expat - this design would have contributed substantially to a cooler city by degrees - what Buckminster Fuller described as “trim tab” technology. I am no longer offended by the stupidity of those around me, nor the narrow self interests of those who would reform a nation that kicked the ass of the most powerful military force in the world at the time, (now supposedly 10x as lethal - but like my former loving wives, likely 10x as, (let me pick this expression carefully) ______ you fill in the blank, i lack the imagination necessary. 

Just like city i live in now lusting the profits of then - the senseless building continues · for a guest that nobody wants, but money everybody thinks they need. Just like the 6 stories i tried to share the logic of the lost opportunity to cool the city i live, but also question the presumed advantage of legions of tourists spending copious amounts of fictitious currency spreading suspect germs and undermining discipline that rendered the invulnerable - vanquished. As a child with the gift of an “encyclopedia britannica” at my beck and call - the Maginot Line was a perfect study for how to protect oneself from a world that grew more dangerous each moment one grew older - a strategy developed by the French “talking heads” at the end of “WWI” - the war to end all wars · yuk, yuk, yuk. etc., etc., etc. .. ···: The thinking of those responsible at the time and expense paid to the “principals” centered around an impermeable fortification capable of deflecting any invasion of the Huns, the Hungarians, the Austro-Hungarians . .. A’ lack no one envisioned herr fureur - petite, mais Magnifique · “fuck ‘em, we’ll just go around the impermeable “Maginot Line” - which he did, sort of like joey biden circumvented the “roadblock of the day” · “medicare for all would dishonor the death of my son” - said no on · ever.

But just like the irrational rejection of a rationally cooling prospect by an “unvetted” source - we stumble forward · alienated from each other for the dumbest of reasons: aping the elite conventional wisdom, “only the worthy remain comfortable” In the last of my conversations with Pop, he really enjoyed driving the point home, “Boy am i glad i’m old.” In my abundant conceit at the time - i’d jolly him along to the next happy expression i could elicit; today, sitting in insufferable late afternoon heat of where i live and what i have to work with, i continue to gain appreciation for his grasp of the “6 Stories” to be told. Today is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s birthday - “It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories; instead of theories to suit facts.” The fact is i am on the back slope of my “afternoon” figuratively and literally. Compared to the “6 Stories” i have participated in or have witnessed from a distance, delusion is what i face next. The idea the non-existence does not fill me with terror like every living entity on the planet regardless of its state of sensatus.

My ear and ear canal is and had been rotting in my head for over a year - and still the organism i inhabit fights for stasis - much like the mind that claims domain over its periphery. I like it more each day knowing my delusion of control for the fiction it represents to all life on the sphere of life i have grown so fond of - Terra 3 from Sol · i have met a family and a man who has named daughters in the same vein, Tem & Sol. I am not alone in knowing how close we Sapiens are to extinction. The anonymous vacant partner i chided in my last post is reading text about our kind, “Sapiens” There are people across our planet who are struggling, not just with the unnecessary interruption of a blood born malady promulgated by a nexus with the limited site of a pharmacological manipulation that no longer has any relation to health but is entirely enslaved to a profit motive of destructive consequence - that as Leonard Cohen stated so clearly, “Everybody Knows.” I’d like to say to you as some sort of vindication, i am glad to go -  but i’d be lying.

Pop, raised me right and would not allow my tongue to spout, what he described throughout my life as “Bullshit” with a capital “B.” Pop was tasked mightily in his last months - almost as though g_d in her infinite wisdom heard his imprecation - “what ?” · and gave hime surcease. My father was brave, and it was my privilege to fight my way to his side, only to find he needed me not - at all. This is a suspicion i grew up believing no matter how he tried to make me feel useful. It is unfortunately all i have to leave you who read searching for reason during an epoch seemingly designed to demonstrate - there is no why for, or why not · only greed. I just spent 5 minutes of my life i will never get back trying to capture an example of the greed that is being shoved down your throats, and don’t i feel stupid giving one more second to agencies determined to enslave you, by transplanting words onto loving speech i share loving with you that has no other intention that diverting you to your lowest possible achievement . fuck ‘em, they are dumber than i, and clearly that is pretty stupid to hold out hope to a dead branch of DNA that would rather titillate than educate itself - let me know how that worked out for you and your generations  

jts 23/05/2020

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved

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Extinction Chronicles - 220520 ·

I just read a fascinating 1st hand account of a drug transaction that took place in a time and place nearly identical to one i know of with entirely different results. To distinguish between the two, we’ll call them D1 and D2. D1 is the account that i just read which is plausible in every way. I know the terrain, the landmarks and the types of characters involved and can fully understand why it was called off - D2 is more personal and involves hubris, ignorance, greed and betrayal; more like a cluster-fuck than a business deal. Sitting here just now preparing to relive the event i realize just how lucky i was to get taken for a ride at an early age rather than spend many years believing i am smarter than i actually am - so rather than tread water in some godforsaken memory · what useful personal experience can i plumb for the general benefit of you the reader¿ To begin with, am i abandoning the comparison of two correlates from envy? Do i secretly wish i possessed the acumen of D1 and rue my dealing debacle and rather than own that envy, slough it off like existential dead skin with sanctimony and high-handedness · that’s a fair question if i am to ask you the reader to use the lens of literature as a means to access the darker recesses of the human soul before it is entirely extinguished.

I feel better already - so fuck you · I watched the backside of woman wash vegetables today who had blown me off like so much dead skin. She is shapely and to ignore the view i was given in our short chat would demean the pleasure of a woman’s body - a pleasure that has animated a huge portion of my life · thank you dear, whether you were aware and just teasing me, as all beautiful women seem to do, or you were entirely oblivious to the pleasure you gave me watching your hips undulate in your brief (& i hate to say it only for the discomfort i know that cloth brings me) polyester garment. When i began this essay, i could barely see for the oppression breath in a tropical climate seems to do to my being. Normally i am in the bathtub soaking in cold water before noon, but today due to obligations - real and imagined i was out peddling in the lethal part of the day - and just to show you how fucking stupid that is, i left my hat sitting by my chair after a heavenly mango smoothie laced with rum, only to realize in the healthier part of the morning i clean forgot the hibiscus when i bought my eucalyptus and peppermint essential oils to fuck with the dust mites and the rats.

Sometimes it frightens me to realize what a diabolical asshole i can be - when i choose. But fun is simply the wiser strategy - bar none · Because of the kindness of a providence that could arrange a mango smoothie laced with rum seems to expand to temporary custody of a misshapen 

chapeau important to no one but me and any yutz that might covet such a loss. Upon my return to sanctuary, never mind how temporary - i could barely walk, much less think, or think about writing, yet here we are. My vittles are courtesy of the same establishment i abandoned the cover to my addled pate; my backup jug of water is in place and my miraculous farmer neighbors are in custody of a gift of seeds from the same kindly spirit that would laugh at my interest while in the next breath undulate her comely shape at me (in my secret life) while we spoke of nothing in particular - tell me life is not fucking amazing. I smoked entirely too much today, but know where i can find hibiscus to add to my DIY expectorant that seems to help me through most inflammation. 

I discovered i have not acclimated to ambient temperature for sleep, and so when it turned hot if found myself attending old wounds - laugh if you must. Almost a year ago i had a near death experience in what i had understood up until that point a placid South China Sea. My daily excursions into the mother salt water was accompanied by change of season waves that drove me under and onto the shore like the particle of sand i am. At age 10 or so, a tossed firecracker ruptured my right eardrum, and moisture and hearing seemed henceforth rended one from the other. It has taken almost a year to evacuate the sea water from my canal which was exacerbated the moment i resorted to A/C to sleep. Go the fuck ahead and tell me “everything is not connected” and i will wait until your back is turned and i am alone with my thoughts to laugh, mirthlessly perhaps, but laugh nonetheless at your .  ..  ··· ________ fill in the blank.

 I had a heartening conversation with a brave spirit this morning - the same kind spirit i forgot to buy hibiscus from, but also somehow managed to remind her of some neglected strategy - go ahead, tell me again how as Master Leonardo Da Vinci said “everything is connected” is some snarky bullshit expression designed by the communists to deprive you of your liberty, and again in the privacy of my own thoughts i will turn my back to you and either pray for your soul or regal in your monumental hubris - likely depending on the time of day, ambient temperature and exactly how much hind-tit i had to suck on to get where i was going. Some days it’s easier to get places than others. What is harder is to stay focused on the more meaningful tasks - “how can i help you to get better at helping others?” I don’t know and as i lean back in my chair, i  feel the sweltering heat laugh at my solitude, and i wonder all the more¿ who is here to rescue me, if i am not here to rescue you?

jts 22/05/2020

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved

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Extinction Chronicles - 210520 ·

Last night in order to stay one step ahead of the goose-steppers, i deleted my user history only to find myself locked out of all my accounts and no idea which password went to what. Because of my age, i am in a unique position with regards to understanding computers. My first job in high school was working with a family of potters. The father had worked in aerospace and when the industry sacked its workforce (for the good of the shareholders), he built two kilns in an industrial complex and put his sizable family to work throwing pots, 5 sons can do a lot of damage if you are as smart as they were. Some years later visiting the same shop, which by then they had transitioned into an Apple outlet, probably not that long after Jobs and Wozniak had vacated their garage. I had no idea what these gizmos were, and asked the father of the five sons “what gives.” He in his carnival barker voice replied - “Well in timeline of history, these things will either compare in importance to the invention of the wheel, or the transition of our species from ‘carbon life form to silicon based life form’.” If i had to add valence to my life prior to or after computers - prior was much richer and far finer in too many ways to describe in a 5 paragraph essay.

I like computers and am no luddite, but i’m pretty sure if Art Intel, (AI) does reach singularity and becomes conscious of itself as forecasted in “The Terminator”, i will become one of the first to go. I once worked in a Computer Aided Design (CAD) laboratory where the sport for bored aerospace workers was to bring the server to its knees - and if you think you have a long memory. But again with the paradoxes, in my conceit i spend hours typing emotive content that because of the inability or disinterest in deciphering the plethora of text computers allow for, will likely evaporate on the rapidly heating hood of mankind’s engine; for example, the last years of Pop’s creative output representing poetry at the pinnacle of his gift was largely written onto 3.5” floppies on his vintage IBM 286 which he wrote poems on until he stopped writing - the computer as i understand it, now lies somewhere in the very moist crawlspace under my brother’s Washington state dwelling. So too for these quaint yammerings of a man dead, but not quite on the central shore of Viet Nam. So last night when i met my Catch-22 and from an abundance of caution deleted my “user history” and locked myself out of access because my recovery email was also locked to me - the only people on the planet with access to my files were the corporate thugs running the checkpoints on the “information Super-Highway”

Lucky for me in a lucid morning moment i remembered a password combination that unlocked the vault and i am able to continue this quixotic, however unimportant effort to document the end-days of a species that was given a paradise and managed to poison it to most forms of life, save those grown in petri dishes of the rich and famous. Back to our “Catch-22” of being locked out of the “Information Super-Highway,” i am reluctant to leave go my domain “Stoneartist.com” because its like that do-hickey you come across when you’re curious and remains long after you are no longer curious. I don’t know the day i gained control of my domain, but i do remember the high hopes of eternal recognition and vindication for my long-suffering creative efforts - what 15-20 years ago. I have never sold a single item from this domain that costs me some $100 per year to maintain; i no longer concede the conceit of a webpage - because who gives a fuck? Last night i had hoped it was the recovery address for my ill-fated purge of my user history, and what i found was a circle jerk. I could not get the googol recovery code because i could not remember the password of my domain email, which is the only reason to maintain the expense. But here is where it gets weird: i am not only paying tribute to my domain server, but i am also paying the salaries of those jackbooted knaves seizing my user history through “eminent domain” or was is “national security” i get the two confused. 

If instead of hitting my brake handle turning on to the coast road going North, i had hit the young mother and child on her moped going through the intersection, all the year’s of documenting my life’s work which is of no interest to anyone but myself, would have been at the mercy of an administrator who owes allegiance to no one but the share-holder. I could have been lying in some state of disrepair - perhaps unconscious, and the only people with access to my work would have been fascists combing my records for evidence of my - what¿? contempt for the status quo · if it were not for more level headed individuals: the Dalai Lama, Thich Nhat Hanh, Pema Chodron, Winston O’Mally; i could see it in my capacity to be committing treason to the “state” and sedition to the betrayal of the poor, by the rich. I did not end up on the pavement, and i still i “redress my grievances” but only for the fluke of having remembered my password. That act of memory doesn’t begin to amount to the number of human exchanges i had this morning on my bicycle, prior to and after the near miss and Cua Dai and the Coast Road: children looking to their parent; large trucks accommodating bicycles, small vendors looking to clients and many, many humans just looking to stay cool.

I am luckier than many i read on the fb channel, including the wannabe historical figure zuké trying to leverage the fluke of his water carrier place in the annals of corporate history into one of influence and meaning - but failing miserably · sadly, just like me. I think C.G.Jung was closer to the mark reflecting on the similarity of rhizomes to the human genome. I have ginger and turmeric growing in the space by my front door i reclaimed from a stump which i was too stupid at the time to realize it would grow back into a tree again just like the eucalyptus in the corner of the house i grew up in the grew back no less than 3 times after being blown down by the Santa Anas of my youth - i know this because some how it became my task to saw the trunk into fireplace size chunks. What will never cease is the growth that root demonstrated each time that all was left was a sprig growing from the stump, just like the one i viciously dug out for g_d knows what reason save that of vanity - that somehow my struggle would be sanctified and made meaningful if i could grow something more useful than the tangle of leaves and weeds that prevented my superior concept of herbs and leafy greens to grow - even now, i can’t tell you which was more useful to the people around me, or the people to come after i leave - “oh well, do your best; hydrate and try to have fun” said Mr. Natural to no one who could hear, or so he feared. 

jts 21/05/2020

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved

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Extinction Chronicles - 200520 ·

I’m torn between exploring love or death just now - “death” because it’s so fucking hot here, i think it might be a good idea to acclimate for where i’m headed; “love” because it is all that stands between us and complete annihilation of our species. Shit is starting to get real as they say in the hood - my real estate agent is vacating a “salaried exempt” position typical of the industry, which when the “economy” functions can be so lucrative that a mortgage is feasible, but when shit tanks - is vulnerable. The thing to keep in mind is that this position i’m describing is the exact position which the leader of the free world occupies. D_rump is mortgaged up to his neck and will do anything to remain solvent - including taking our nation’s wealth. My real estate agent is not that unscrupulous, but how do i aid someone betting a family’s future on the “infinite growth paradigm”¿ I don’t know. When we die, there is no debt, except the karmic payments we have assumed by our behavior. The physical reality of Newton’s 3rd law of Physics could be described as “Stevens’ 3rd law of Metaphysics” - for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction - do shit, and shit will come back around. The hitch to this inexorable truth can be found in the Bhagavad Gita which also points out the secret of human freedom is to do well without attachment to the results.

Fucking paradox - tell me g_d is not a broad with a wicked sense of humor. My sense is the mooks fucking shit up for all, have determined they are going to die and there is no retribution anywhere for any action they take in this earthly realm - they, by nothing more than their convictions are allowed to commit mayhem to their dying day · and there will be no, as the militarist euphemistically describe it, “blowback.” What if they are wrong - what if you are a curios megalomaniac with nothing but time on your hands and resources to point you toward this obscure but seditious discourse; and what if you’re wrong¿ What if James Joyce was prescient in his priest’s description of hell in the early novella “The Artist As a Young Man” was accurate? You may want to take a break now and do you “due diligence” as they say in the trade, just to see what may be in store for you if you misjudged the existential reality of “payback is motherfucker;” and if that is not enough of a caution - try Geoffrey Chaucers’ description of the “Summoners Tale” where the friars were well described at the asshole of Satan, wiggling and lurching from pain to pain. If that is not enough to give you pause in your reckless and ill-conceived destruction of a species, try taking your metallic intellect and plunging it into the emptiness of your own soul in search of substance without atmosphere - lost in space might be a bitch if you are dead as fuck.

Then there is love - ah love · what a remarkable rescue from so much loneliness. But what does it take to be worthy of that elixir of bliss blended with humility and warm heartedness¿ is it even real, or just another manipulated screen by someone with one hand on the keyboard, and the other in your pocket? I don’t Know - IDK · Bob Dylan sang this conundrum quite well, “I used to care, but things have changed.” well folks - here’s cheek, Bob · “you be lying” : “But what do i know?” - Michel de Montaigne. When i awoke from my appendectomy in 2005, i didn’t yet know my 3rd wife had already left me in all but spirit. I do remember the room - a pale pea green that oddly resembled he lack of pain that i’d been in for the past 36 or so hours. My last memory was looking into the face of the surgeon who was about to gut me - she was pretty in a blond-bored kind of way, and the only wit i had about me was to plead, “i’m a stone cutter and my stomach is really important to me, please be careful” to which she powerfully made clear my “faux pas,” by telling this soon to be anesthetized chit at L.A. County General - “I am careful with ALL my patients.” And so with great trepidation about some unconscious nurturing from a snarky, but lovely internist i’d just offended, i went under and learning to appreciate more fully how little control i have in this world. I awoke in a pale pea green room, without the pain that had incrementally increased until my diagnosis 30 hours into this medical journey. They finally plugged relief into the intravenous catheter i had watched a bored technician “cock sideways” after she had plunged it into my vein - (i’d asked at the time, 20 hour marker, “won’t that tear the vein” - to which she nodded an indifferent affirmative). Upon waking, all i could see was the arc of an enormous crescent shaped window with the skyline of a Los Angeles i’d been born to, but barely knew.

Behind my head i heard a voice emerge from through the fog of anesthesia and relief from 36 hours of nearly continuous pain; the voice said gently “breathe, breathe deeply,” so i did. I’d not seen my wife since she had dropped me off at County USC some 20 hours into the ordeal, and she was nowhere around as i regained consciousness - fuck i was just grateful to be alive · The young fellow in the bed across from mine, which had a top sheet but no pillowcase was wired and in incased on 3 of the limbs i could see. He had slid his motorbike into the the wall of the transition from the 5 south to the 110 north at Chaves Ravine - two knees and an elbow were crushed like the corners of a cardboard box, but he sounded cheery and happy to be alive - not unlike myself. I was told when they discovered me awake that as soon as i could take a shit · i could go home, meaning the “chit” was no longer ticking and i was no longer hawking my future to an illness i did not see coming - much like my roommate who’d be in hock for much, much longer. I commenced walking the halls, knowing medically the sooner you grow capillaries and the more you hydrate - the better you will recover - i was so amped on opioids that it didn’t matter who i talked to or where the fuck my wife was, we were all friends and so i took a shit and went home.

My wife arrived in my van and on our drive “home” that Thursday, she informed me - “I’m leaving you” · well what are you going to say - “don’t”, “please don’t” · i went back to work on Monday and when returning from my walk from the train station was accompanied by the local homies pressing me for “where you moving to, when are you leaving, what’s going on?,” clearly i had no clue but it was Monday and the El Camino hadn’t been driven in more than 5 days - the battery needed to be charged · i called my wife to explain that i was taking the car out to charge the battery, so if i wasn’t back when she got home - the battery had died · “try and reach me on the cell phone.” - she paused, this had been only the 2nd time we’d spoken since she’d picked my up from the hospital and had announced her plans, which i still not believe .  .. “I moved out today,” she calmly explained, to which i replied “then i guess it doesn’t matter to you if the El Camino dies,” i had to hang up, my battery needed charging. I finally understood 15 years later and counting that she did her level best with what she had. It has probably taken that entire time to understand what a gift she had given me, leaving when she did. She was my love and my universe, and it will be no different now than when i draw my last breath - except there may be another who may have become my love and my universe .  ..  ··· i just don’t know; i do know that love is grand - though sometimes a bit bumpy.

jts 20/05/2020

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved

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Extinction Chronicles - 190520 ·

It is okay to whine and complain, or the contraction “whinge,” it is not okay to attribute that choice to someone, or something else; not because it is forbidden in the holy scriptures, or that it indicates a character flaw - but because to attribute what you feel or do to anyone other than the seat of your own agency is not real; you are going to die - that is real. The paradox is that the more suffering of others that you can relieve between now and when you die - the happier you will be is more real. But how is this possible if you have absolutely no control over another human being? The Chinese artist Al Weiwei demonstrated this fact quite creatively when he so provoked the government of China as to force them to incarcerate him in such a way that he had absolutely no privacy at any time during an 81 day period - guards accompanied him to the toilet, to the shower to his sleep. Yet he presses on, as one can after such intrusion. He has not surrendered and though i do not follow his continuing exploits, i commend his gumption and valor. If i could figure out a way to provoke the fossil fuel/digital overlords to attempt anything remotely similar with my life, i would; not from solidarity with Al Weiwei’s form of dissidence but because at the end of that day of protest, China is a more monitored nation than anyplace on earth.

I fear that any commentary about that event, simply “normalizes” the intrusion of state into the lives of all, nor am i sure that my particular brand of crazy would be anymore effective in impeding the destruction of our world by greed - but i’d give it the good old “college try”. We human beings are so surrounded by luxuriant beauty and rich examples of a good life that it continues to astonish me that people would want anything more than waking up and opening their eyes and breathing. Pop lived the last 10 months of his live amped on opioids with a catheter stuck up his penis to piss into because he crushed the thigh knuckle of his right femur trotting for the toilet. It was a privilege and a hoot to spend copious hours attending to the wonder he still managed to hold for a world that was extraordinarily reduced from the days of his youth as a pilot flying B-17 bombers across the Mojave Desert, though never being forced to murder citizens for war. One example of the way he lived his life, during one of our afternoon conversations he confided out of the blue - “we were taxiing after landing and my wheel brakes failed - the bombardier in the nose was crushed to death, there was nothing i could do,” then he moved on . .. ··· after the divorce Ma, would ridicule pop for waking up at night screaming - as though that justified their separation. 

They both did the very best they could with what they had, and i remember exactly when that lesson sunk in. I had been invited down to Anthony Amato’s farm in Vista, CA. He was a stone mason who reinvented himself as artist in the hotbed of creative life Southern California circa 1980’s. I was a wild card having attended the Laguna Beach School of Art previously having returned from NYC, hammer in hand and the catechism of Jose De Creeft’s advocacy of hand carving tattooed to the inside of my skull. Tony and i had an awkward relationship out of the gate, for by that time my studio hours were in the 1,000’s and his claim to fame was that Gloria Vanderbilt was his private student after 15 years of hanging curtain wall marble through the greater Los Angeles area - his favorite boast was “I’m a stone carving thoroughbred from 5 generations of stone cutters going all the way back to Italy.” - I loved Tony Amato, but he was never my master - back to the morning in Vista. I was an unpaid “intern” to him, while he set up his carving school in the hills of Vista - i was strong as a hemp rope and tireless; he knew this and needed my affirmation because he was also looking to dislodge the other sculpture teacher in the type of intrigue that can only found amongst the vain seeking immortality, Lewis Cohen who had been instrumental in securing 6 or so consecutive scholarships for me; i betrayed Lewis by throwing my support Tony’s way, and 30 years later Lew has still not forgiven me.

Tony was a wise guy in his own way, and i have no regrets for the years i spent carving granite under his guidance .  .  . back to the morning in question - 3 days, picking, digging, dragging and trenching, and i liked it. Tony was older by a decade and a “journeyman” mason - we were down on the southern slope and he was mocking my pace - “a dollar waiting on a dime” · while i was patiently trying to describe the complexities of having been raised by parents who had wanted to murder me, but wouldn’t own it. “Look Joseph, they did the best they could with what they had at the time, and your blaming them now is just bullshit and won’t change a thing.” There is no reply to clarity like that, and no matter how many times i might want to explain that hearing my mother tell the story over and over of walking in on pop in the bathroom in the middle of the night holding my squalling body and asking him “what are you doing¿” with his wry reply - “trying to figure out how to flush him down the toilet” wounded my soul in places that are difficult to recover from, but there is no one else that can stitch it up but myself - Mr. Amato never ascertained me a “journeyman” stone cutter · oh well .  ..  · · · 

Then there is that fucking paradox - in his last days with Pop savoring a lemon rind as though it was the finest liquor he had ever tasted, or turning to me after wiping his ass and telling me, “i’m not gonna forget this.” How does one reconcile the individual healing with the very real service that is available to every human on the planet witnessing suffering of any kind? I don’t know, that is a question. Buckminster Fuller said, “if you can’t solve a problem, enlarge it,” so i do, or try. We are a species on the brink of exterminating ourselves with nary a backward glance. Citizens of the once gr8 nation ‘merica are declining to wear masks for no better reason than vanity - to use the vernacular SMFH. The rest of the world is so far ahead in determining our species fate, i can only hope the corporate whores ruling DC (apologies to sexworkers worldwide) have not so antagonized the entire planet against a nation - for all my pointed criticism, i love dearly and hold in high esteem. Corporations are a worldwide menace and nothing about their rapacious behavior is unique to my country - it is this delusion that the world must face, there are no good guys, or bad guys; there is only “how can i help and what will it take for you to feel safe?” - everything else, as my father and Tony Amato might have said, is “bullshit.”

jts 19/05/2020

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved

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Extinction Chronicles - 180520 ·

Exclusion is the goto tool of the narcissist - i know this because i was raised by one, maybe two. Growing up in a vastly white suburban city of Orange County, bordering the wannabe center of the known universe - Newport Beach, i went to school with many; i probably possess more traits of a narcissist than i am comfortable with admitting to, but not so many i can’t hold the possibility up and peer into its darkness. My saving grace was to be born a two-eyed cyclops which gave me just enough cache to not be murdered in my crib by my beautiful family. Rather than narcissism my condition gave me a near-pathological revulsion for bullies - i say near pathological because murder is for people who do not know how to adapt, and as a two-eyed cyclops - adaptability is something you acquire or starve to death trying to find your food on the plate. G_d in her infinite mercy created a great imbalance in the visual acuity between my two eyes, with the one eye no longer correctable - if it ever was. I think this was meant to help me orient in a 3 dimensional world, having no concrete example of what 3 dimensions looks like; i know this because when young and someone asked if it was right or left, i had to pick up a pencil to find left - that much i knew; i’m still left-handed, emphatically: most of my compliments are left-handed; my politics are left of left and i usually take what is left over because the crush of VIP’s and wannabe VIP’s at the buffet table gives me a rash.

As does cruelty of any kind, and as i grow closer to death most especially the cruelty i’ve yet to purge from my own being. Being a blind person with sight, i’ve had to sense a lot of things in the world. I wear my hair long because i’d read somewhere of a military unit during WWII that was recruited off the reservation because of supernatural gifts at certain reconnaissance, but after induction and their locks had been shorn the gift had vanished. Whether true or not is of little importance, because like the placebo - if you believe it to be true · you’re halfway home. This supposition is partly what drives me to distraction with the frenzy surrounding the current nincompoop occupying the West Wing of the White House. He is a an empty suite of the purest kind - a man devoid of character and essentially composed of nothing more than the attention you give him - don’t believe me, ask his wife. What is most dangerous about this phase of our species’ disappearance from the face of the planet is how much time and effort are wasted combatting a cipher. Like the people who fill a room of strangers with tales of their travels, the extent of their accomplishments and a list of the do’s and don’ts you must comply with to be of any worth to the gathering, so too d_rump relies entirely on cooperation and proximity to the microphone. 

I am very wary of people who require microphones to make a point, but more wary of people such as young master zuké of the ubiquitous fb channel who presumes the role of who talks-to-who, or as Bob Dylan said so well “you dance with who they tell you to, or you don’t dance at all.” Zuké not unique to this conceit if you’ve ever been to a Hollywood anything you will find that the importance of a conversation is ranked by its proximity to the microphone - the closer to the microphone, the more important the conversation. I’m sorry, it seems stupid to me that we humans have arranged our world around amplification. My neighbors have just suffered a great loss which was only been made clear by their absence. On their return and in my awkward efforts to be of service, the matriarch could only answer in the negative to my question - is everything all right? - “Khong, was her only reply. Someone important to my neighbor friends has died, that is clear. The country i was born to has just past 90,000 deaths from the same virus that has claimed a single life in Viet Nam - the U.S. is only 2/3 larger in population. This is what i mean about proximity to the “microphone” someone in control has determined to listen to the wrong channel about how to live, or humanity is listening to the wrong channel about how not to live. 

The greatest irony is there are acolytes here in VN trumpeting the benefits of “free market economies” and how, if VN would only emulate the very successful ways of the “Western World” they too could enjoy the benefits of goods-galore in the markets and be as “cool” as all the characters they see on Movie screens and TV screens, and Telephone screens .  .. etc., etc., Even the the artists that i’ve met in this nation are taken in by the allure of fame and what it can do for your “career” - if only you would _______ fill in the blank. As a failed artist and deeply flawed genius, i have no standing in the argument. These are not the days when noble Patrons employed noblesse oblige in service of a better world. These are the days of avaricious gallery owners pimping artists to the lowest bidder. Go to the Art Basel Galler-Rama and see what is selling; to who and for what price and you will see how low the bar has been set for the “end-days” culture. If you know “Artspeak” and are properly hooked up - the sky’s the limit, you might even get hung at “Mar-A-Lago,” imagine what that would do for your career to be included in the chump collection?

But these are the “Extinction Chronicles and rather than point out what all but the most dense amongst us see, but won’t talk about - let us examine whether it is useful to adhere to the whimsical dictates of the big shots amongst us - those who have more “likes” more “local friends” more “destinations” and most importantly - more “money than g_d”. How about if we invite jeffrey bezos to come and give a seminar on how VN might rally from its recent C-19 success and attract new markets that will ultimately benefit all of VN, like the same petro-nazis who have skimmed the easy pickings from the U.S. Stimulus package. Those fuckers are not nationalists anymore than the art industrialists give a fuck about your development as a creative person desperately trying to find correlations for your suffering in a way that will contribute to your tribe’s survival - whatever tribe that may be. For my money - i have no tribe; like Groucho Marx said so well “I wouldn’t want to be a member of any club that would have me as a member”. Being a human is a condition i cannot excise from my being, however much i whistle like a bird or moo like water buffalo i am stuck with all the conflicting human emotions of hate, envy and pettiness that our species continues to hand down to each generation until something greater in our souls can be found than greed as a reason to wake up each day.  

Wasn’t this fun · yeah, i’m laughing at you too, whoever you are who was dumb enough to read this far looking for an answer to an impossible question like “how do we survive” ?

jts 18/05/2020

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved

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